In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life.

The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of "The Secret History" is "an elegant, edifying work of art" ("Entertainment Weekly"). Even more transfixingly suspenseful than its predecessor, this is a dark work of lost childhood, rich in moral paradox, as a 12-year-old Mississippi girl sets out to find her brother's murderer

When August, an anthropologist who has studied the funeral traditions of different cultures, revisits her old neighborhood after her father's death, her reunion with a brother and a chance encounter with an old friend bring back a flood of childhood memories. Flashbacks depict the isolation she felt moving from rural Tennessee to New York and show how her later years were influenced by the black power movement, nearby street violence, her father's...

Newly orphaned seventeen-year old Marin accepts a nanny position for an acclaimed horror writer and her mother's childhood friend, but she soon realizes all is not well at Lovelace House and must unravel its secrets before they consume her. After a tragedy leaves Marin Blythe alone in the world, she receives an invitation from Alice Lovelace-- an acclaimed horror writer and childhood friend of Marin's mother-- offering a nanny position at Lovelace...

"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original...

"In uproarious, brand-new pieces, Barry tackles everything from family trips, bat mitzvah parties and dating (he's serious about that title: "When my daughter can legally commence dating--February 24, 2040--I intend to monitor her closely, even if I am deceased") to funeral instructions ("I would like my eulogy to be given by William Shatner"), the differences between male and female friendships, the deeper meaning of Fifty Shades of Grey, and a father's...

"Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids--from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis...

"Miles is an anxious boy who loves his family's bowling center. Amy is the new girl at school, who tries to write her way to her own happily-ever-after and does not want to live above her uncles funeral home. Then Miles and Amy meet in the most unexpected way ... and it is the beginning of everything."--

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the...